With rapid development of video cameras and video movies integrated with VTR, interests of users are being diversified and many people are now making individual videos. Accordingly, various functions with which free video presentations can be achieved have come to be demanded of video cameras. As one of such functions, there is a professional AE system using a variable electronic shutter as reported in the Record of the Institute of Television Engineers, Vol. 14, No. 16 (1990) pp. 1-6. In this system, since the depth of field can be selected as in a single lens reflex camera, it is possible to produce a portrait effect by keeping only an object in focus and rendering the background out of focus or to keep objects, ranging from that which is close to the camera to that which is away from the camera, in focus by setting the depth of field greater.
On the other hand, general users are demanding video cameras having good operability, ease of handling and yet being capable of taking beautiful pictures. Accordingly, various automatic functions such as automatic white balancing and automatic focusing functions are frequently mounted on video cameras as reported in the Record of the Institute of Television Engineers, Vol. 14, No. 16 (1990) pp. 13-18 or The Institute of Television Engineers, Advance Copy of National Convention (1990) pp. 21-24.
In the professional AE system, however, only the function to render the background out of focus or the like are achievable and processing for colors, for example, is not achievable. Further, the degree of freedom in selecting the value of the stop or the speed of the shutter greatly depends on the illuminance of the surrounding of the object and, hence, there has been a problem that such functions cannot be satisfactorily achieved when the illuminance is low.
Although the above described automatic functions for white balancing or the like can be performed to a certain degree, it is difficult to have the functions achieved to such a high level as achieved by a skilled user through manual adjustments with conditions of the object and the surroundings taken into consideration. In order to improve automatic functions to such a high level, the camera itself must be able to recognize what the object is to a certain degree, but conventional cameras have not had such a function.